


Surely to the Sea

by damaskrose



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - All Female, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Everyone Is Gay, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-12
Updated: 2018-05-12
Packaged: 2019-05-05 14:44:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14620893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/damaskrose/pseuds/damaskrose
Summary: She thinks of Bodhi. Of the grease smudged on her face and the stammer on her tongue. Of the goggles on her forehead and the blazing courage in her eyes. Of the pilot who risked everything. Of the woman who has found her way into a little crack in Cassia's heart.Or: the main five in Rogue One are all women, no one dies, and Cassia can't figure out what to do with her feelings for Bodhi.





	Surely to the Sea

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, they're all women. No, I didn't really bother changing names. Yes, this is very self-indulgent. No, I don't care.

Nights on Tatooine are cold. During the day the sun is relentless and harsher than blaster fire. Heat waves undulate above golden dunes stretching out to eternity. At night, the temperature plummets until a lace of frost forms on the sand, sparkling in the faint light like a sea of stars.

In the daytime, the group treks across the sand to the meetup spot. They sweat and complain for all they're worth–except K, who relishes every chance she gets to remind them that she can't feel the heat.  Once the sun dips beneath the horizon, everyone's sweat freezes even under silver foil blankets and sleeping bags.

By the fourth night, Cassia–a child of gently tropical Fest–has decided she's never returning to Tatooine after this mission. Even if doing so could single-handedly topple the Empire.

Well, that's a lie. She would do it in a heartbeat. She'd just hate it the whole damn time.

Probably her hatred of this place is what causes their breakneck speed  across the desert. Probably why they end up at the pick-up spot a whole day early. At least she’s not to blame for the Sand People attack that leaves their equipment malfunctioning.

But it still leaves the situation as:

  * five tired human rebels 
  * an obnoxiously less-tired droid
  * three top-secret transmissions
  * slightly less than twenty four hours until pick-up
  * no way of contacting the rebellion.



So they wait. K holds watch on the ridge above their camp since she doesn't need sleep. The rest of them huddle in the little shelter provided by the rickety half-hut that counts as a meeting spot. It's no warmer than any other night, but they're flushed and giddy over success that somehow makes things warmer. Even Baze’s complaints about sand between her toes doesn’t take away from the thrill of a job well-completed.

At first, no one feels like sleeping. The shift of sand, the shush of wind in the distance–any of it could be stormtroopers or returning Sand People. So they play cards for a bit, pretending it's just a way of staying warm. Bodhi, as it turns out, knows a terrifying number of gambling games. She also loses more than half the games. Cassia doesn't ask.

Chirrut tells a long-winded story about a blind Jedi who bears a striking resemblance to the story-teller that has Baze rolling her eyes. Cassia tried to recount a funny mission involving a Twi'lek dancer, a rubber lightsaber, and a smuggling ring. With a sigh Bodhi informs her she makes jokes about as funny as an engineering manual. Jyn wishes for some alcohol, even though they're on a job. Baze agrees wistfully.

Eventually, only Bodhi and Cassia are left awake. Chirrut and Baze lie curled together under the same blanket, curved towards each other like parentheses. One of them is making a noise like a Wookiee with a chainsaw. Cassia suspects Chirrut. Jyn folds herself into a compact bundle with jutting elbows and is out like an extinguished candle. K is a dark, unmoving shadow on the horizon.

Excluding K, Cassia known them all for only a few weeks and yet they all seem so familiar. Scarif has bonded them in a way she never expected. There’s really no reason they  _ all _ needed to be assigned to this one job, of course. It was just a simple infiltration of an Imperial base that could have been done with half the number. But once Cassia mentioned it, Bodhi insisted on coming, and then Jyn got wind, and then Chirrut and Baze soon followed.

"So..." Bodhi says after a few minutes of restless shifting. (Normally, Cassia can click sleep on and off like a light, like a good soldier. Not tonight, though. She's too aware of the empty sand dunes whistling in the breeze, of Bodhi's warm shape next to her.)

"Can't sleep?" Cassia says. She can feel the cold of the desert even though her blanket, sinking in through her skin and into her bones. Her old wounds are going to be stiff in the morning, but she’s dealt with worse.

Bodhi rolls over with a crinkle of silver foil, props herself up on one elbow. "Not really. Always been a light sleeper."

"Hmm." Cassia isn’t much of an expert in the art of small talk, so she just puts her hands behind her head. "I had horrible nightmares when I was a kid, actually. Kept me up all the time."

"Of what?"

Cassia rolls to face Bodhi.

"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have asked," Bodhi adds before Cassia can say anything.

"Of being swallowed by a Hutt," Cassia says, solemn as possible to get a laugh out of Bodhi.

Bodhi makes some kind of laugh-choke noise which is enough of a reward. "Really? The great General Andor is afraid of Hutts?"

"Really." After her father’s death the nightmares became other things, of course. That doesn’t mean she can’t remember waking in a cold sweat from dreams of cutting her way out of a distended belly, though. The all-consuming terror that took hours to shake.

Bodhi sits up, wrapping the silver blanket around her, so Cassia does the same. "Tatooine reminds me of Jedha, in a way," she says, voice softer. "The sand dunes, the emptiness. But the Empire doesn't have its hooks as deep in this planet."

Cassia just nods. Bodhi hasn't talked much about her life on Jedha before she was a cargo pilot, and she's never asked. For Cassia, pasts are a thing you lock away so they don't break you. Something you take out only when needed to warm yourself by its glow or fuel your mission. But maybe that should change.

"How did you deal with the nightmares?" Cassia gets the sense Bodhi isn't just talking about dreams of Hutts anymore.

Cassia clears her throat, feeling awkward all of a sudden. "My mother, um, used to sing to me." She's not sure why it feels so personal to tell Bodhi that. Maybe because, even now, she can conjure the low, rough sound of her mother's voice and the feeling of a hand stroking her hair. Like all memories of her old life, those of her mother are dim, but also worn smooth as a river stone from years of replaying.

"Can you sing?" Cassia can't read Bodhi's expression in the dark, but she tips her head in a way that might be coy.

"...Kind of? Probably?" For the past twenty years, she's been more interested in being able to scale a cliff while holding a sniper rifle or outflying Imperial TIE fighters. 

But still, she's had a few occasions to sing with an audience, and no one covered their ears. Mostly around the rebel base after a victory and a little too much celebratory moonshine. Rebels would pull out instruments, dig through their memories for the lyrics to folk songs, and fumble the steps to dances learned long ago. They’d swing each other around the concrete bunkers for a few hours until they could forget the horrors outside. There’s something she’s always liked about singing–how something so intangible can still have such an effect on people even though it’s gone after just a second.

Bodhi sighs. Then, somehow, she's leaning against Cassia. After a moment of hesitation, Cassia leans back. The sand dunes roll out forever, blue as the sea, and the stars are cold jewels above, but Bodhi is warm and solid next to her.

"Could you sing me something, Cassia?" She sounds, in that moment, a little like the child she could have been years ago, but her voice has all the tiredness of the Bodhi who saw Scarif and Jedha.

"...Me?" Cassia thinks she's misheard for a moment, but of course she hasn't.

Blast it, why does her stomach feel so tingly with something like nerves? She's General  _ blasted _ Andor, who stared down the Death Star and lived to tell the tale. She’s given speeches in front of hundreds of rebels. Infiltrated any number of Imperial bases. Stolen the plans from the Death Star right out from the Empire’s nose. Yet this simple conversation makes her feel like she’s walking across a minefield. It’s almost that feeling like she should calculate each step carefully but just wants to rush through it. This time, though, the uncertainty is thrilling rather than terrifying.

Then again, being a general doesn’t mean she’s had much experience with…romantic entanglements. Quite the opposite, in fact.

"Only, only if you want to, of course," Bodhi stumbles to reassure her. Except by the time she says that Cassia has already envisioned her voice spiraling up to the stars and across the desert. It's kind of a tempting image.

Cassia clears her throat and desperately searches for any song that she can remember. “ _ Wise men say _ …” she begins after a moment.

Her voice sort of cracks on the second word. She feels something that definitely  _ isn’t _ a blush warm her cheeks, but she keeps going on. It’s not a lullaby her mother once sang, but an old song she learned years ago. It’s about the inevitability of love and damning the consequences. About how something as simple as holding a hand can change your whole world.

She almost freezes with mortification when she reaches the first time she sings “love.” It’s one of those words that seems to…hang in the air. Despite that, she keeps going on, hoping she doesn’t sound as strangled as she thinks she does.

“ _ For I can’t help falling in love with you _ ,” she finally finishes. Even though she’s kind of passed through embarrassment clear through the other side, she still has the childish urge to hide her face in her hands. The sound seems to fade into the cold night air, soaking into the sand and dispersing on the wind. But maybe, just maybe, leaving something a little warmer behind.

"That was, that was lovely," says Bodhi, scooting a little closer to Cassia. Then somehow their faces are close enough together that Cassia can feel her breath on her cheeks. “Who did you learn that from? Your mother?”

It takes Cassia’s brain a little longer than it should to process Bodhi’s question. “No…”

The inch of space between them is a galaxy.

She thinks of Bodhi. Of the grease smudged on her face and the stammer on her tongue. Of the goggles on her forehead and the blazing courage in her eyes. Of the pilot who risked everything. Of the woman who has found her way into a little crack in Cassia's heart.

This relationship has come together all wrong, Cassia knows. Beginnings and ending and middles have been all tumbled together. They know the heart of the other but barely anything else.

But just because it started strange is no reason not to try.

There might have been a galaxy between them, but when they closed the distance, every star in it went supernova.

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry @ Diego Luna for making Cassia hate Hutts.
> 
> I'm pretty sure the thing about Bodhi being a gambler is canon?
> 
> Cassia sings "Can't Help Falling In Love" in because Diego Luna did it in The Book of Life and I went "Damn, does this mean Cassian can sing?"
> 
> Why are they are Tatooine? IDK man, I wrote this ages ago.


End file.
